The Ruben Amorim era got underway at Manchester United at the weekend with a rather uninspiring 1-1 draw at struggling Ipswich Town, highlighting some of the problems the Portuguese will need to tackle moving forward.
United have spent much of this year revamping the structure and strategy behind the scenes at Old Trafford, something that Sir Jim Ratcliffe had been keen to address ever since completing the deal for a 27.7% stake in the club at the beginning of 2024.
That deal handed the British billionaire oversight over football matters, as well as leading the plan for what happens with Old Trafford’s future and the plans for a new stadium.
Amorim – who replaced the sacked Erik ten Hag earlier this month – is the first changing of the managerial guard since Ratcliffe’s arrival as a minority owner of the club, and the noises already have pointed toward a change in shift when it comes to transfer policy. Ratcliffe and his INEOS team are expected to hand the Portuguese more modest sums over the coming transfer windows, moving themselves away from an era of rinse-and-repeat excess when it comes to wages and fees paid that has yielded precious little in terms of competitive success, which is the very thing it was designed to deliver.
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Ratcliffe’s approach shouldn’t be surprising. Figures produced last week by the Swiss-based CIES Football Observatory highlighted just how profligate the club had been when compared to their rivals when it came to spending heavily, especially in the context of a lack of Premier League titles to show for it.
CIES analysed transfer incomings and outgoings from 2015 to 2024. For the period, United came out as the worst performers in Europe when it came to negative spending. The club had a negative net transfer spend of €1.3bn (£1.09bn) over the nine-year period in question.
That figure was enough to see them as the highest net spenders, with Chelsea (£1.01bn), Paris Saint-Germain (£827.7m), Arsenal (£664m), and Tottenham Hotspur (£593.9m) rounding out the top five. Manchester City were sixth with £587.2m, while Liverpool were the best performers of the so-called ‘big six’ with £305.7m.
The figure highlights that there has been no shortage of resource made available to a succession of United managers, but there has been a lack of a clear and defined transfer strategy that has resulted in over-inflated fees and much tumult, with value seldom realised on the sale of outgoing talent, as well as a less than stellar figure produced from moving on academy graduates, which results in pure profit. Chelsea have been particularly successful at that over the last few years.
In terms of actual transfer spend committed by clubs, including add-ons, over the same time period in question, United rank third on the list at €1.95bn (£1.63bn), behind City in second (£1.64bn) and Chelsea, way out in front with a mammoth transfer spend of £2.32bn. More than £1bn of that has been committed during the last two years of ownership of the Blues by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital.
For Ratcliffe, the era of excess of United is set to come to an end. For Amorim and sporting director Dan Ashworth and the newly-assembled team underneath him, finding value in the market will be where the focus now lies in the quest to return the club to former glories.
